Mini Quilt Monday meets what I was supposed to blog about last Friday

How's that for a long, un-catchy title? Let's hope my epitaph is a little bit more of an attention grabber.
But, the truth is the truth. I was supposed to blog about new additions to the shop last Friday and instead I was, you know, eating bon-bons.
Ok, maybe not eating bon-bons, but it didn't happen, so I'm going to add(read shove) that into this post.
First though, a mini quilt:

or two:

or maybe even three:

All these are made with Moda Pre-cuts called Honeycombs. They are and I say this as a self-proclaimed expert on the value of sliced bread, the best invention since...well, you know.
I love them so much I plan on carrying them in my store(along with a pattern designed just for them) when they are released in January of 2014.
The one with the circle dyed in its center is one of these:

I patterned a few hexagons by clamping and over dyeing them like I do my Twinkle circles.
Serious excitement ensued when I un-clamped these babies, but, no mention of their relation to the greatness of sliced bread. That's reserved for the hexagons themselves.
I see lots of possibilities with these and that excitement is inspiring all sorts of new ideas with the other pre-cuts as well.
More on that in a future post.

As for what's new in my shop, well I've got a couple of new pieces of fabric patterned with new designs.

And plans to add a bunch of quilts over the next few days. So, if you have a chance, check it out.

Mini Quilt Mondays::Fire in the Hole

Actually, no fire and I wasn't planning on yelling that in a crowded theater.
I just happen to name today's mini quilt, Circle in the Hole(coming pics will hopefully explain why) and, because my mind works in a very stream of consciousness way, the phrase, fire in the hole, came to mind.
That's the end of the association.
Anyhoo, here is this week's mini:

I've had that center dyed circle since possibly the beginning of time and it just seemed right to finally use it. Also, I've been thinking a lot about my Fish Baby Log Cabin quilt design. Put these two things together and what do you have? I don't know for sure, but this seemed as good a guess as any.

For those of you interested in playing along with the weekly mini quilt making, I created a flickr group just for that purpose, so feel free to join the fun.

The Breakfast Club

My post has only a very little to do with that wonderful 80's movie, The Breakfast Club, but I needed a title and the movie did actually start me down memory lane.
Confused yet? I am and I'm writing this.
It all began last night...sort of.
I've been working on a mini quilt to add to my store and over the weekend had finished the quilting and was ready to bind.
Last night being the last night of my daughter's summer vacation, she said she wanted to watch the Breakfast Club with me.
"We can stream it through Netflix, Mom, " she said. " It's a classic."
I remember being in High School when this movie came out and going to the theater to see it. No streaming then.
Next thing you know we're settling in on her bed, laptop perched on her lap, and preparing to enjoy this now classic movie.
In the interest of having something to post here today, I decided to use the time to finish the binding on the quilt and then it struck me, " Tomorrow is Monday. I used to have a weekly feature on my blog and even a related Flickr group called Mini Quilt Monday."
There you have it, my brief trip down memory lane, recounted here so I could post this:

I previously mentioned that in cleaning(read excavating) my studio, I found various bits of patchwork that I had set aside for one reason or another. The center portion of this mini quilt and another were mostly dyed to look like improvisationally pieced Double Wedding Ring blocks.
I added more improv strips, quilted it in concentric circles from the center out, and bound it while watching Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson, now 45 and 53, respectively, act out their teenage angst.

Pretty good times and good memories.

The dog ate it

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Actually, in all fairness to my sweet puppy, she didn't eat my mini quilt this Monday. She couldn't of. I didn't make a mini for today. I've been too busy working on several projects including two big quilts. Well, one is definitely large and the other is more large-ish. I didn't want to disappoint too much, so I've taken some in progress shots of those quilts.


Sorry for the crappy lighting, but this is against a wall in what seems like a permanently dim part of my studio. Anyway, the customer who requested this quilt liked the hexagon mini I'd made in the past, but wanted hers to be a wee bit bigger. This one will measure about 36"x45" when it's all pieced. It's not really even large-ish, but something about it being constructed out of hexagons makes me think it is.


The other quilt that's been keeping me busy is this bigger version of my Nate quilt.
It too is a for a lovely customer and it was her idea to include a smattering a twinkle circles amongst the squares. I really like this idea and it's given me a chance to incorporate both large and small circles. Now that I think about it, this quilt, when finished, won't be huge either, just 60"x 90", but I think of both of these quilts as big pieces. Maybe it's all the mini quilts I've made lately or the fact that these are not the only projects I'm working on or maybe I'm shrinking and will soon join the Lilliputians?
Regardless, this is my excuse for not completing the week's mini quilt assignment.

Another Twinkle Quilt

In my own defense I want to say that I can quit whenever I want.


I just don't want to stop making these circles. And they're starting to creep into other designs.


But, like I said, I'm not powerless.

Floor Pillow Masquerading as Mini Quilt and Winner

This Monday is somewhat reminiscent of last Monday. I sort of have something mini quilt-like, but not really. I'm OK with that because the point of Mini Quilt Monday was to spur me on to try new things and I think I have. Just, sometimes the trials don't necessarily lead to a final product that can be specifically defined as a mini quilt.
But, before I get into describing my non-mini quilt, I first want to thank you all for participating in the giveaway and announce our winner:

Two Dogs and a Quilt said...The quilt is gorgeous! I love the subtle earthy colors. Nice that your daughter...

Congratulations! Please email me at malka@stitchindye.com with your address and I'll get your DVD to you super quick-like.

OK, back to the regular programming.


I made a floor pillow! I've been thinking about this for a long time and I decided that this was the week to craft a floor pillow. When I was a kid, we had a bunch of floor pillows in our living room. We never sat on the couch to watch TV or read a book. We always got cozy with one or two large scale pillows. Whenever I mention that we need a few floor pillows, my kids give me quizzical looks and mutter,huh? I don't understand how they've made it this far in life without the pleasure of sprawling out on the floor with a squishy pillow. Even as I write this the pillow has already migrated to the sofa. I might have to make a stack of these before my family gets the point, but I'm determined to bring back the floor pillow as a viable seating option.

Mini Quilt Monday...kinda, almost, sort of...

It is and it isn't. It is because actually I have a fully formed mini quilt to show, but it isn't because the aforementioned quilt is mostly a repeat of a design I've already featured. It is because I did design something new and it is mini, but I opted to turn the top into a pillow rather than leave it a mini quilt.
So here are my sorta, kinda, almost,maybe mini quilts for this first Monday in June.


The "real" mini quilt is just another version of the patches mini quilt I've shown here before. This one is made out of some undyed cottons and linens and bits from a Moda jelly roll. I've never sewn with a jelly roll before, though I've eaten my fair share of them, but I made this quilt as a class sample for a mini quilt class I'll be teaching this summer at a local store, Sew Much More. The class isn't until August, but I needed to make the sample for publicity purposes.


The folks at Sew Much More just started stocking fabric along with an amazing array of sewing machines and accessories, so they wanted me to make the sample with material they carry.


This is the other half of my nearly mini Monday offerings. As a disclaimer, let me say, that I had every intention of crafting this design into a proper mini quilt Monday piece. Unfortunately, to paraphrase Mick Jagger," Time was not on my side."


So, I made a pillow instead. It's still mini, just not quite as two dimensional. And, like the patches design, you'll probably be seeing more of it.

Mini Quilt Monday :: Yellow Edition

One of my goals in taking on the challenge of Mini Quilt Monday was to investigate some technical or design element every week. Sometimes the idea being explored altered the quilt in a big way. I feel that was the case last week. And sometimes, the new idea or direction is just a small variation of something I've already tried. I think that's OK too. A lot of times making one of these minis has spawned a slew possible variations on a given design.
This week's mini falls into the subtle variation category, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about for a while.


The concept, simple quilts, has to do with whole cloth quilts crafted out of a single, beautifully dyed piece of fabric. I envision this top heavily quilted and bound by a contrasting fabric whose color is intensified by the color of the top. Oftentimes, when I work out a design idea I do so in stages. This mini quilt seems like it might be stage 1 of my simple quilts idea.


It's obviously not constructed out of one piece of fabric, but I did stick to mostly yellow fabrics. I wanted it to read like a color field, but to be made out of small, slightly different bits. To accentuate it's singleness of hue, I bound it with some amazing yellow silk dupioni.


Photographing the quilt against this gray background was pretty much a no brainer. I'm especially partial to this view where so much of the background is included. It really highlights that color field quality.

This is the last Monday in May and technically, the end of my May celebration of mini quilts. But I'm not feeling done with Mini Quilt Monday, so I'm extending my commitment to weekly Monday Mini Quilts through June. I invite you all to join me on any or all of the Mondays in June by posting your mini quilt to the Mini Quilt Monday flickr group .
And, if you have a minute, check out Melissa's little beauty on her blog, Whatknot .

Inside Out Mini Monday

My original design for this week's mini quilt was thwarted by how much I liked the side with all the seams. This isn't the first time I've noticed and enjoyed the "wrong" side, but it is the first time I changed everything to highlight it.


What really sold me on the idea of featuring the raw edge side was the way the seams looked. I can be lazy sometimes about changing thread and at the time I was starting to piece this quilt, I was using an orange thread both as bobbin and top thread. I found that I really liked the way the orange contrasted with the whites and other light colored fabrics and how it emphasized the lines of the concentric piecing.


Once I decided that I was going to feature the raw edges, I realized I had a second design question to ponder. Did I want the top to look like the underside of a quilt, meaning that the fabric shown was always from the wrong side? I actually didn't want that. So, I had to piece all the blocks with wrong sides facing to make sure that the "right" side of the fabric faced out. Sound confusing?


When I stitched with my own hand dyed fabrics or with whites and solid linens, the right side/wrong side issue wasn't really present. But when I used commercial prints, I really had to pay attention because, after years of sewing with the right sides together, doing the opposite is no easy feat.


I also went back and forth about how to quilt and bind this little quilt and, in the end, decided to go with simple stitching in white thread. I wanted the quilting to be there, but not overt. The choice of binding fabric was partly dictated by the orange thread used to piece the top and partly influenced by my plan to photograph the quilt against a gray background. Orange and gray do look awfully good together, don't they?

Monday Mini Quilt with a Hexagon Twist

Wow! There are a lot of eager baby quilt makers out there. I enjoyed reading all your comments, especially the ones that mentioned soon-to-be babies as an impetus for making quilts.
According to the random number generator, the winning comments were:

cheryl norwood said...

Love your fabric, pillows and quilts---looks like a cute book, too!

Congratulations, Cheryl! Email me your address and I'll pass that along to the folks at Lark so you can receive your copy ASAP.

This week's Monday mini quilt is all about my newest shape obsession, hexagons. Well, maybe not exactly an obsession, but I am making a large bed sized quilt with hexagons and I've done a fair amount of English paper piecing of hexagons, so, perhaps the phrase strongly held interest applies.

Like last week's mini, this one utilizes a lot of leftovers from my scraps basket. I drafted a hexagon that measured about 4" in width and used that to create my patches. I didn't paper piece this quilt though. I machine pieced them with "Y" seams. The sewing wasn't exactly super fast, but a whole lot quicker than hand sewing.

And it made simple quilt-in the-ditch possible as I didn't have to worry about using the quilting to help hold the top together like I would have had I used paper piecing.

Frankly, the hardest, most time consuming aspect of this quilt was the binding. Because it needed to go around unusually shaped corners, I cut all the strips on the bias and then had to carefully manipulate it in and out of each edge. Also, I needed to hand stitch the backside of the binding rather than using a machine zig-zag.

I'll be adding these images to the Mini quilt Monday pool over at flickr. As of this minute, 12:40pm CST, there are 199 members in the group, so that means there are a whole bunch of wonderful mini quilts to enjoy. Run...don't walk (interenetly speaking, of course), to see these quilts.

And, as an appetizer to the group, take a gander at these two mini quilts sent to me via email this morning. This one is by Rossie. She's used a dye technique that's near and dear to my heart to craft her little beauty. And this one is by Chawne, aka cauchy09. If you get a chance to see Chawne's mini, take some time to check out her photostream. This woman has made some wonderful quilts.

Happy Monday!

PS. For those of you looking for more stitch in dye bundles and 1/4 pound scrap bundles, they'll be more in the shop this afternoon.

It's not about the pictures

Really. This post is to let you all know about a new flickr group I've started to celebrate Mini Quilt Monday. Check it out here and, if you're interested, I'd love for you to join. There are already quite a few terrific little quilts in the group which makes me so happy. Also, I managed to navigate the process of creating the group which actually wasn't that complicated, but I'm still semi-amazed I didn't screw it up.
These pictures have absolutely nothing to do with the post, but I'm seriously averse to posting without images. Nine times out of ten when I visit other blogs, I enjoy all the pictures before I ever stop to read the text.


This fabric was hung out to dry yesterday and and looked so pretty on the line that despite its wrinkles I took some pictures of it.


Then today I crafted some of it into a pair of pillow covers for my shop .

More Mini Quilt Monday

It's Monday...in May...so, it must be time for more mini quilts, right? And just to ratchet things up a wee bit, I took some of today's images with my Macro lens. How's that for adding to the alliterative atmosphere?
Before I tell you about my latest mini quilt, I'd like to invite to check out the little lovelies courtesy of Rossie, Marty (she seems to have caught the alliteration bug as well), and Kajsa.
I actually have you all to thank for the inspiration for today's mini quilt. I really appreciated the comments about my Patch Pillow and was buoyed by them to craft a quilt using the same technique. But, because I get bored easily, I decided to add variety by altering a small detail.


From the moment I decided to uses the patches design for my mini quilt, I knew I wanted to round the corners. It's such a little change, but it was the design element I was most excited about.


I couldn't wait to finish the quilting so that I could trim the edges and round them.


The binding fabric is a commercial print I bought at IKEA the other day. I spent way too much time thinking about what kind of fabric I wanted for the binding, but it seems to me that if I'm going to call attention to the edges by rounding them, then I've got to be choosy about what covers those edges.
Also, in response to several of you who expressed an interest in the scraps still lingering in my basket, I've created a new "category" of bundles for my shop .

I've been offering my stitch in dye bundles for a while. These are variety packs of my hand dyed fabric that include 18, 5"x5" squares. They're easy to measure out and add up to a total yardage of about 1/4 yard. I had a bit of trouble deciding how to quantify these scrap bundles. I didn't want to just eye them because I would hate for anyone to feel like they didn't get a fair amount.


But I also didn't want to measure each scrap and then add those measurements up until I got about 1/4 yard of fabric. That did not seem like a good use of my time. I decided to weigh the bundles on my kitchen scale and equalize the amounts that way. The process of weighing the fabric inspired its product name, 1/4 pound bundles. So, there they are, 4 ounces of hand dyed fabric goodness tied together with raffia. I think you'd be amazed how many scraps it takes to make 1/4 pound. I was.
I'll be adding these to my shop later today.
Edited- The 1/4 pound bundles are sold, but there will be more soon!
Happy Monday!